Educational research as a practical science

This article offers a philosophical contribution to recent debates about the assessment of quality in educational research. It shows how criticisms of the quality of educational research—pointing to its failure to meet epistemic criteria of rigour and practical criteria of relevance—are an inevitable manifestation of the flawed assumption that educational research is to be understood as a species of modern social science. It draws on Furlong and Oancea’s study of quality in practice‐based research, Gadamer’s critique of modern social science and Lagemann’s historical account of the origins and evolution of educational research in the USA, to argue for a reconstruction of educational research as a species of Aristotelian practical science.